“Absolutely,” said Kira, nodding in agreement. “The pieces all fit together a little too well to be an accident.”

“What about expiration?” asked Heron. “That’s ostensibly the other reason we’re out here, right? Does it say how to stop it?”

“That’s another thing that seems to have been a secret,” said Kira. “Encrypted emails and everything. Some of the Trust knew about it; others, such as Morgan, apparently didn’t. Without reading weeks of emailed conversations between the members of the Trust, I can’t say why.”

“Probably because some of them objected,” said Samm. “You said there were arguments about the Failsafe, right? So I assume there were people who opposed it?”

Kira nodded. “There were. My father, for example, thought it was unconscionable to create new life forms with kill switches.” She couldn’t help but smile at this bit of goodness from her father, knowing that he opposed something she hated so strongly. Even knowing that she had no biological connection to him, or perhaps because she knew it, these other connections carried so much more weight.

Afa nodded, almost compulsively, drawing pictures on the floor with his finger as he talked. “So the Trust had a plan they didn’t tell ParaGen, but between them they still disagreed, or they each had their own plan and they didn’t tell each other. Maybe both, or maybe somewhere in the middle.”

“Right,” said Kira. “There was a plan—at least one.”

“But what about the expiration date?” asked Heron again. “You said there was something there—what was it?”

“Just theories and projections,” said Kira. She held out the screen. “You can read them for yourself if you want: long talks about the need for a Partial expiration date, and how long the shelf life should be, and how it should work, and who was going to build. On and on and on. But no formulas, no genetic codes, no medical details of any kind.”

“Just like the virus,” said Samm. “I thought this data center had all of ParaGen’s files?”

Afa kept doodling with his finger. “So did I.”

“Then where’s the rest of it?” asked Kira. “Another tower? I don’t know if we’re going to get that generator running again.”

“I looked through their entire directory,” said Afa. “Everything from ParaGen was on that tower.”

“But it’s obviously not,” said Heron, “so where’s the rest?”

“I don’t know,” said Afa.

“Maybe we need to check the directory again,” said Samm, but Kira shook her head.

“It’s clear they didn’t want the most important pieces of their plan in the cloud, as Afa calls it. The rest of the files are exactly where we thought they were.” She sucked in a breath, dreading the next part: “And we’re going there.”

Heron shook her head. “You don’t mean Denver.”

“Of course I mean Denver.”